Montessori-Pierson Publishing Company, Amsterdam (2025)

12/08/2025

EDUCATION MUST BEGIN AT BIRTH
…something takes place in the subconscious which is not seen from the outside. How else would he speak with such exactness? The fact that nothing external is being shown is no proof that something very important is not happening. This is why we must understand this stage in human development; if you study psychology from the outer reactions and aspect of the child, if you judge from the external behaviour and think nothing is happening inside, then you would be making a grave mistake.The greatest mistake ever made is to isolate the child from the society of the adult, as has happened in modern times. We admit the child to the company of adults only when he has a mind similar to the adults. A child needs to be with adults when he is a tiny child. It is the reality of the results which has given us new faith that something is happening within the child at this early age. Therefore, we must always take him with us; we should talk to him – we should not relegate him to one room to sleep alone all day. He can sleep all night. He must have the opportunities to make those acquisitions which endow him with human faculties. Certainly it is a new task that confronts us, to study and take into account the needs of this absorbent mind. It is to respond to these needs that we say, ‘Education must begin at birth’. We must provide the child’s psychic powers with the nourishment they require. Page 53 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

06/08/2025

START PRIMARY SCHOOL AT THREE OR EVEN TWO YEARS OF AGE
At six they are just beginning to understand the world. They have already understood much without a teacher. We cannot begin their education at six, because they have already been through an entire life which has now finished. If a child were to receive no instruction during this life, at the age of six, he would be undernourished. If at six we make a start at teaching him from the beginning, then he would only be bored. The conclusion is that children should start primary school well before the age of six. Some are now saying that children should begin school at five years of age. But even this is too late. At three, a kind of lull sets in, a waiting for the next period. Suppose we start at three or even two years of age. It is possible for the child to gain a great deal of knowledge before the age of six, without fatigue, because nourishment does not cause fatigue. If a child becomes tired from being taught, it is a sign that we are presenting the wrong knowledge at the wrong time. The child must enjoy learning because he is an intelligent, free creature in the world. The characteristic of man is intelligence and so it certainly should be a joy to exercise one’s intelligence. It should give satisfaction and enthusiasm for work. If a school does not provide this, then the school must be wrong and apparently not base itself on the child’s true nature. Page 27 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

15/07/2025

From the great turmoil arose a vision of peace and justice and, when it was over, many peoples united to take measures to ensure that never again would differences between men lead to a disaster of such proportion, that never again storms of selfishness, hatred, inconceivable cruelty and terror would come to pass, that never again would there be a need to resort to destruction in desperate defence of humanistic ideals.
From this concert between peoples emerged the Declaration we are celebrating today.
(On December 10, 1951, the third anniversary of the “Declaration of Human Rights”was celebrated throughout the world in an effort to elicit the moral adherence and commitment of those responsible in the areas of politics, education and culture, thus ensuring that the principles of the Declaration would become a common heritage and grow in daily practice.
Maria Montessori was invited by UNESCO to speak.) page 47
Principle 10
The child shall be protected from practices which may foster racial, religious and any other form of discrimination. He shall be brought up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, peace and universal brotherhood, and in full consciousness that his energy and talents should be devoted to the service of his fellow men. page 60 of the book Citizen of the World https://montessori-pierson.com/products/citizen-of-the-world-vol-14; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/ciudadano-del-mundo-vol-11https://montessori-pierson.com/products/ciudadano-del-mundo-vol-11.

08/07/2025

CONSTRUCTION THROUGH SENSITIVITIES
…life is endowed with certain sensitivities, and all acquisitions follow from them. The child is directed in his growth to the acquisition of human faculties by particular sensitivities which are not permanent but last only for determined periods of time necessary for making a specific acquisition. Then they cease. Dr Montessori calls these the sensitive periods of growth. As long as they exist, the child feels a strong attraction towards certain sets of experiences, but the attraction is not prompted by his will, just as hunger and the subsequent attraction to food is not due to a determination on one’s part to be hungry. Nature gives the adult, as well as the child, intelligent directives by a sensitivity without which one might die of starvation. In the child the directing unconscious sets have both a definite path and a definite timetable.
Guided by these temporary sensitivities, the child constructs sets of permanent ones which determine his attitude towards life. He builds up a fairly perfect adaptation to his special environment. The mother- tongue acquired by him in childhood, generally speaking, will be the only language he will feel comfortable with…The same can be said for the other aspects of the human personality…the deep feelings for one’s own motherland, religion, special customs….are so powerful that they shape the individual’s attitude towards life.
None of these are inborn; they have nothing to do with heredity. They are due to an active construction of the child carried out in the unconscious and made under the guidance of special sensitivities, which disappear after they have fulfilled their task. The constructions, however, remain and their sum total forms the attitude of the individual, guiding the conscious of his later life.
So, we must take into consideration the unconscious and the built-up subconscious along with consciousness itself. That is education. Page 102-103 from the book Interpreting Montessori, A Selection of Writings by Mario M. Montessori https://montessori-pierson.com/products/interpreting-montessori-a-selection-of-writings-by-mario-m-montessori-vol-26

24/06/2025

THE UNIVERSE AS A VISION OF THE WHOLE
It is certainly necessary to centralize the interest of the child, but the usual methods today are not effective to that end. How can the mind of a growing individual continue to be interested if all our teaching be around one particular subject of limited scope, and is confined to the transmission of such small details of knowledge as he is able to memorize? How can we force the child to be interested when interest can only arise from within? It is only duty and fatigue which can be induced from without, never interest! That point must be very clear.
If the idea of the universe be presented to the child in the right way, it will do more for him than just arouse his interest, for it will create in him admiration and wonder, a feeling loftier than any interest and more satisfying…Page 4 from the book: To educate the human potential: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/to-educate-the-human-potential-vol-6; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/la-educacion-de-las-potencialidades-humanas-vol-6; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/opvoeden-voor-een-nieuwe-wereld-en-onderwijs-en-het-menselijk-potentieel

17/06/2025

EDUCATION FOR PEACE
I would like to propound an idea of fundamental importance: the sort of education required to advance the cause of peace must necessarily be complex and altogether different from what is ordinarily meant by the word education.
Education as it is ordinarily regarded plays no part in solving important social questions and is believed to have no effect on situations concerning humanity as a whole. It is considered, in short, to be of very limited importance. But if we are to have genuine education for peace, education must be universally considered a fundamental and indispensable factor, the point of departure, a question of crucial interest to all mankind. When we consider social questions, the child is totally ignored, as if he were not a member of society at all. But if we ponder the influence that education can have on the attainment of world peace, it becomes clear that we must make the child and his education our primary concern…
Education must no longer be regarded only as a matter of teaching children, but as a social question of the highest importance, because it is the one question that concerns all mankind. The many other social questions have to do with one group or another of adults, with relatively small numbers of human beings; the social question of the child, however, has to do with all men everywhere. Page 44 from the book Education and Peace https://montessori-pierson.com/products/education-and-peace-vol-10 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/educacion-y-paz

10/06/2025

THE SURPRISING POWER OF THE YOUNG CHILD
…It was the revelation of the great powers existing in man at an age when there was not yet any regard for him – when he is a young child. These little children came alight with joy and began to read and write. No teacher had taught them and they read and wrote from morning to night. Their joy was like a flame. The important thing was this sudden revelation in the psychology of the child. Their achievement was not due to the action of an educator – it was a revelation of the power of little children. People made a lot of fuss about the method. Everyone said it was my marvellous method which gave this ability to children, and everyone was enthusiastic about it. However, it was neither the school nor the method which produced this phenomenon. It was the expression of the power of the small child and it was a revelation of something that had hitherto remained unknown. The important thing was the discovery of the surprising power of the young child. I was lost in admiration – in the realization that children at such a young age, four and a half years, have this great power, this great intelligence! The older children, the nine- year-olds, were less intelligent. This was the first time that we had evidence that the intelligence of man does not progress forward, becoming ever greater. At the different ages there are different mentalities. There is a form of mind in younger children that is different from that of older children. For the first time we realized that the young child has powers which are lost as it grows older. It is a matter of the evolution of each life individually. Page 10/11 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

02/06/2025

ORGANISATION OF THE INTELLIGENCE
Experience in the first ten digits and in the meaning of zero is provided by further materials until the child is able to lay the ten number cards in sequence and put under each the corresponding number of counters. By now he is between four and five years old. It was logical to conclude that the next step would be to continue with 11, 12, 13, etc., and this Dr Montessori did for many years. One day, children of this age were present at a lesson given to seven-year- olds with a material that presented in concrete form the working of the decimal system. The seven-year-olds were lukewarm, but surprisingly the younger ones showed great enthusiasm...This is another example of the sensitive periods: what leaves the older children more or less indifferent can arouse intense interest in the younger ones…..How was this possible? How could children who were not interested in 11 be so enthusiastic about 100s and 1000s? It seemed illogical. And then she saw how very logical it was. With the clear knowledge they had gained of the numbers up to 10 the children had got hold of a “key” which allowed them to explore the decimal system. It was the possibility of doing so that aroused their enthusiasm...Gradually she showed them the difference between addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. The enthusiasm and enjoyment of the children in carrying out these operations is difficult to describe – as was the disbelief of many visitors who were astonished that children so young could be given such big sums. Dr Montessori, however, considered all spontaneous activities of the children as psychological phenomena connected with the formation and the organisation of the intelligence. She was not trying to teach mathematics logically, she was witnessing certain facts which, in this case, were occurring in connection with mathematics and she was striving to understand what they meant. Page 57,58 from the book Interpreting Montessori, A Selection of Writings by Mario M. Montessori https://montessori-pierson.com/products/interpreting-montessori-a-selection-of-writings-by-mario-m-montessori-vol-26

22/05/2025

CONTACT WITH REAL THINGS BRING WITH THEM A REAL QUANTITY OF KNOWLEDGE
In its entirety, the world always repeats more or less the same elements. If we study, for example, the life of plants or insects in nature, we more or less get the idea of the life of all plants or insects in the world. There is no one person who knows all the plants; it is enough to see one pine to be able to imagine how all the other pines live. When we have become familiarized with the characteristics of the life of the insects we see in the fields, we are able to form an idea of the life of all other insects. There has never been anyone who has had all the insects of the universe available to his view. The world is acquired psychologically by means of the imagination. Reality is studied in detail, and then the whole is imagined. The detail is able to grow in the imagination, and so total knowledge is attained. The act of studying things is, in a way, meditation on detail. This is to say that the qualities of a fragment of nature are deeply impressed upon an individual.
It is self-evident that the possession of and contact with real things bring with them, above all, a real quantity of knowledge. The inspiration engendered by it revitalizes the intelligence that was interested and wished to know. From all these things new intellectual interests arise (climates, winds, et cetera). Instruction becomes a living thing. Instead of being illustrated, it is brought to life. In a word, the outing is a new key for the intensification of instruction ordinarily given in the school. Page 17 from the book From Childhood to Adolescence https://montessori-pierson.com/products/from-childhood-to-adolescence-vol-12; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/de-la-infancia-a-la-adolescencia-vol-12 ; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/van-de-kinderjaren-naar-de-adolescentie

12/05/2025

ART AND MUSIC at IMI, DELFT
23-24th of may at the International Montessori Institute in Delft there will be an inspiration weekend: How Art and Music can be incorporated in the Montessori environment. Montessori trainers Elina Rautasalo (AMI 3-6 Trainer) and Bo Mynett (AMI 6-12 Trainer), will share their passion and wealth of knowledge about this year's theme.

Register at https://imi-global.nl/inspiration-weekend/

“How touching it is that man has this instinct, this joy and sentiment for music. Through the little children these things, art and music, remain forever with humanity – over time music has been recombined and developed throughout humanity.” P 94-95 from the book The 1946 London Lectures: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-1946-london-lectures-vol-17 ;https://montessori-pierson.com/products/las-conferencias-de-londres-en-1946-vol-17

We will be there too. You can purchase our books with a 15% discount.

04/05/2025

May 4 and 5: The Dutch remember their dead and celebrate freedom.
Taking as a point of departure her (ed: Maria Montessori's) firm conviction that the child must be our teacher and her ideas regarding the free, harmonious, and balanced development of the individual human being, she moved on to consider the problems of human and social development and began a crusade in the name of education: "Establishing a lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war." Education and Peace page viii. https://montessori-pierson.com/products/education-and-peace-vol-10; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/educacion-y-paz;

24/04/2025

THE UNFOLDING INTELLIGENCE
It is well known how our pedagogy considers the environment so important as to make it the central point of the whole pedagogical approach, while we give to the child’s sensorial activity a more fundamental and systematic consideration than any previous educational method. There is, however, a subtle difference between the old conception of the child as passive and the real facts. This difference lies in the existence of the child’s inner sensibility. There is a long sensitive period, lasting almost to the age of five, which gives the child a truly enormous capacity of processing the images of its environment. The child is an observer who through his senses is actively absorbing images, and this is very different from saying that he is able to receive them like a mirror. To be an observer implies an inner impulse determined by feeling, by special tastes, leading thus to a selection of certain images rather than others…
Let us go straight to the point. The axis round which the internal working of the sensitive period revolves is reason. Such reasoning must be looked upon as a natural, creative function that little by little buds and develops and assumes concrete form from the images it absorbs from its environment.
Here is the irresistible force, the primal energy. Images fall at once into pattern in the service of reason: it is in the service of his reason that the child first absorbs such images. He is hungry for them, and, we may well say, insatiable. It has always been known that a young child is strongly attracted to light, colours, sounds, in all of which he takes visible delight. But what we want to prove is the inner fact of a reason that exists in a purely germ state. There is no need for us to underline how we should reverence and assist such passing from nothingness to a beginning; he is bringing into being the most precious gift which gives man his superiority: reason. Page 48/49 from The Secret of Childhood: https://montessori-pierson.com/products/the-secret-of-childhood-vol-22; https://montessori-pierson.com/products/el-nino-el-secreto-de-la-infancia-vol-4

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